


the road to ruin (and we're starting at the end)

by astrangetypeofchemistry



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/F, Mentions of Suicide, Metaphor-Heavy, Parallels of Fairy-Tales, Pride Zine Piece, Romance, chlolila, inspired by rapunzel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-20 00:54:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20219116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrangetypeofchemistry/pseuds/astrangetypeofchemistry
Summary: But princesses in towers, if they found others like themselves, were at an advantage, because words weren’t needed for them to transmit those emotions. They’d smile at each other, pained grimaces melting away with time and patience, and the sound of another human’s breathing would be enough to soothe away some of the ache in their hearts.





	the road to ruin (and we're starting at the end)

**Author's Note:**

> i've been meaning to post this for months and just. didn't. it's the piece i'm the most proud of. 
> 
> originally written for ml  
pride zine vol 2

As a child, she’d always thought princesses in towers had it easy.

They lived in luxury away from the world, their parents giving them an easy life where they were neither betrayed nor in pain. Their lives were free from dangers, from struggles, from hardships, from endless wars. There was no need to go on some insane quest to find themselves and return with battle scars and festering wounds. Friends weren’t dying around them and foes weren’t outright hurting them, because there _ were _ no friends or foes. 

Those princesses sat by a window and waited to be saved, letting bitterness and rebellions pass and fade. Their returns were always met with warm greetings from their people, and all would be well by the time they returned to the outside world.

The illusion shattered when Chloe, eight years old, cried out in pain for a mother who was too busy chasing after dreams that didn’t involve children. 

* * *

As an adolescent, she’d kept remembering that princesses in towers didn’t have it easy. 

There was nothing to do except listen to the thoughts swirling around their heads. Nothing except the torture that came from listening to and thinking the same thoughts over and over again. Life has no zest, no meaning, no hopes or fears or _ anything _ that could make it a life. All they could do was sit for years on end, lonely without companionship and conversation. 

Those princesses spent years fighting demons, trapped in their own minds and winning battles no one could comprehend. They toiled and toiled until their understanding of life transcended their own parents’, and sat quietly as someone else lived in the false glory of saving them.

It was in those moments Chloe wondered how anyone could live in such a state and not try to ascend to a different plane of existence. 

It’s not like anyone would be around to save those princesses from ending their lives. 

* * *

The sufferings of princesses in towers have a twinge to them, a certain look and feel and _ emotion _ that most people don’t recognize or don’t understand. That’s why, when everyone is too busy avoiding Lila Rossi for the lies she has told, Chloe is the only one to defend Lila Rossi to a group of angry classmates. 

Maybe the shock that everyone expresses at Chloe standing up for another human is really the biggest loss for princesses in towers. Their minds have a way of looking at things, at people, at situations, at emotions that only those who have spent their lives in isolation can understand. There’s a linear path in Chloe’s mind from Lila’s lies to her lonely past, to quiet nights spent staring out the window and wondering if she was capable of being loved, to the stories she crafted as if her life hadn’t been wasted away in a tower. Others can’t see it, can’t see the emptiness in Lila’s eyes and the torturous waiting that princesses in towers are always forced to live through, but to Chloe, it was brighter than the smiles her classmates threw at one another. 

Friendship was easy for her peers, because all they had to do was talk about their summers and all the things about their lives that they hated. But no one wanted to hear about summers wasted away inside the same four walls, without a single living soul and the silence that threatens to choke you faster than the dragons can. 

But princesses in towers, if they found others like themselves, were at an advantage, because words weren’t needed for them to transmit those emotions. They’d smile at each other, pained grimaces melting away with time and patience, and the sound of another human’s breathing would be enough to soothe away some of the ache in their hearts. 

And Lila recognizes it when Chloe says, “Can’t any of you show a little compassion to someone who made a simple mistake?” Recognizes the agonizing waiting for a prince that never came, that left all those princesses to spend their lives hoping for someone who has already moved on.

That recognition shows in the way Lila takes refuge in Chloe’s companionship, in the way Lila swarms to Chloe whether it’s a political dinner or lunch at school or a partner project where people can choose who they work with. 

And there’s a definitive relief in knowing that even when your own mind has managed to convince you that no one out there wants anything to do with you, even when the world has shown you over and over again that you don’t have any worth left in it, other princesses from other towers do want you, do find worth in your existence. 

Some days, that knowledge is the only thing that keeps Chloe going, because the only thing worse than never finding another princess in a tower is finding and losing. 

* * *

A common misconception of princesses in towers is that the wonder they feel at rejoining civilization tides them over for the rest of their lives. 

Wonder at the unknown is a great tool of control at first, but as time passes and winds blow, their love for interactions fades like leaves on trees. Rage is always simmering underneath the surface, and they never stop thinking about the people who locked them away in the first place. Gates don’t lock without the aid of a human hand, and oftentimes that hand is attached to someone who will fake enthusiasm and celebration when the tower is vacated. 

Their bitterness is never voiced, because the fear of being locked up yet again hovers over their every movement as they smile and laugh their way into the hearts of their jailors. Every moment is laced with a faked gentleness and grace and poise that they’ve developed only as a tactic of defense. No one sees through that armor, because no one knows or cares enough about princesses in towers to observe them enough. 

Except, evidently, other princesses in towers. 

* * *

Political dinners have always been the bane of Chloe’s existence precisely because she has to flutter her eyelashes and twirl her hair at grown men whose self esteems _ should _ be tough enough to withstand the rejection of a teenage girl. Nothing interesting ever happens, and no one ever breaks out of the norms of social etiquette and high society to acknowledge anything of importance. 

Maybe that is why, when Lila asks her to dance across her balcony at night, she accepts. That is why, when she’s pushed in water and her expensive dress is ruined, her only response is to reach for Lila’s leg and pull her in. Anyone can force knowledge of affairs and sit through a dinner with people of power, and anyone can smile at princesses from towers and talk about how happy and safe they must feel, but only princesses from towers can help other princesses unwind and laugh. 

So it’s really no surprise when Chloe Bourgeois, soaked to the bone and drenched from the water of her own rooftop pool, leans forward and captures Lila Rossi’s lips with her own, sealing a promise of an endless rescue and a wavering loneliness that only they can understand. 

* * *

As an adult, she knows princesses in towers have it neither easy nor tough. 

They are stuck in a loop of isolation and luxury, in having nothing and everything all at once. With the absence of danger comes the absence of adventure, and anything that can happen to help them learn or to help them hurt and heal just doesn’t. They are victims to neither pain, nor love, and waste not time but do not save it either. They never have to lose, and yet, never gain, either. 

But there is no one stopping them from leaving, no guards or maids or parents to repeat “We’re trying to keep you safe.” It is just them and the wilderness, the only obstacle between them and freedom being their own belief that someone would save them. 

But Chloe is done waiting for a prince to end her isolation when she can do it herself. So she opens up the window instead of just staring out of it, climbs down the tower instead of fantasizing someone else doing the opposite, and goes off on her own search to find another princess in a tower that doesn’t have the strength to rescue herself. 

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @queerinette


End file.
